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Tag: China

The number of supertankers sailing toward China’s ports surged to a nine-month high as over 80 very large crude carriers VLCCs – the industry’s biggest ships – sail toward the Asian country’s ports. At an average of 2 million barrels each, the 160 million barrels will help refill Chinas 727 million barrel SPR which it started in 2012.” – Zero Hedge

Dumb asses. Yep that sums it up. While the west, aided by the Saudis, try to rock Putin’s world they all take a blow to the chin and who walks away with the tangibles? China. Smooth move currency warriors!

What to do?

Notice that the governments of the world are run by people who could never be successful in business – so they got a government job.

The rise of China was bound to happen. No amount of progress on built on debt can ever surpass indefinitely the potential for progress built on production. It’s simple math.

Now we wait and watch for the official news that the Petrodollar is declared dead. It may take weeks or months, but it will happen. What is unknown is wether the PetroYuan will replace it – or if bilateral trading will take over leaving no reserve currency in the Dollar’s place.

NBC News reports the attack includes drones and is expecting to hit up to 20 targets. FOX is reporting Qatar is among the arab nation coalition (along with UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain), according to Lt. Col. Oliver North, which is rather surprising given their rather well-known support for Al-Nusra.” – Zero Hedge

I think history will record that The United States of America took the first real military action in World War III. Until now we’ve seen only proxy wars in places like the Middle East, Africa, and Ukraine. We’ve seen economic and diplomatic divisions form between East & West. We’ve seen other nations choose sides between the East & West. Taking these proxy wars hot is a pivotal moment.

What amazes me most is how cool the Russians and Chinese are playing all this. They don’t seem anxious to take this farther at all; which is probably why the U.S. is doing all the shooting. I don’t think the Russians or Chinese want a war with America… I think they are happy to see the economic pendulum swing back East. The PetroYuan seems to be more of a possibility every day, the BRICS in general are a growing economic and production powerhouse, the energy reserves they control rival the West. Why would they want to go to war with the West?

The West on the other hand is deep in debt, fracking ourselves to death for oil, and sparking destabilization globally at every turn.

The rise of the PetroYuan has not been far from our headlines in the last year, with China increasingly leveraging its rise as an economic power and as the most important incremental market for hydrocarbon exporters, in the Persian Gulf and the former Soviet Union, to circumscribe dollar dominance in global energy – with potentially profound ramifications for America’s strategic position. And now, as AP reports, for the first time in history, China has docked a Navy Destroyer in the Southern Iranian port of Bandar-Abbas – right across the Straits of Hormuz from ‘US stronghold-for-now’ Bahrain and UAE.” – Zero Hedge

Traveling from Shanghai to San Francisco in under two hours may sound like a fantasy, but China believes it’s figured out how to design an underwater vehicle that can make the idea a reality.” – RT News

Amazing propulsion technology is true. Would love to see this used for peace, but seems it’s built for a Real Red Dawn.

As the US has acknowledged that the Islamic State group is a greater threat than Al-Qaeda, the White House is reportedly seeking domestic legal justification at home to use unlimited military force against the Sunni extremists in Iraq and Syria. On Friday, the Obama administration said that the killing of American journalist James Foley by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants amounts to a direct terrorist attack on the United States.” – RT USA

A growing number of Americans are realizing that it’s not just terrorism the powers-that-be are working so hard to protect us from – it’s the collapse of the U.S. Dollar they are really worried about. The economy of the West was built for speed not endurance. Piling debt upon debt can give you incredibly fast growth – and we see the results all around us – but it doesn’t give you longevity.

Economic longevity comes providing real value to the people around you. The BRICS don’t have the debt problem we have, they have economies built longevity – at least in the short-term. I suspect they will end up following in our footsteps – but for now the pendulum is swinging east.

While folks argue over the latest noise, an apparent Islamic State operative visits the White House and snaps a selfie of his other phone.

This photo, apparently taken in front of the White House, was posted to Twitter with the caption, “#AmessagefromISIStoUS We are in your state We are in your Cities We are in your streets You are our goals anywhere.” – ABC News

There’s no telling what is real anymore… but if we step back from these distractions and listen the larger narratives we can see the trends. Here’s some of the trends & noise I’m talking about:

What could go wrong? All kidding aside, I know a lot of people don’t like to dwell on this stuff, and truth be told I don’t either – but I think it’s important to pop our Ostrich heads out of the ground for a moment now & then to look at the direction the wind is blowing.

When you turn down the media noise one trend emerges – destabilization. That’s the undertone to all the news noise I linked to above. All these trends have this one common denominator.

So instead of getting caught up in the chaos step back and ask yourself how you can hedge against the risk of the world destabilizing. You know like preparing for a big rain storm, only potentially bigger.

I personally think increasing self-reliance, downsizing commitments, and expecting change are good places to start. Everyone will take a different approach to preparedness but if your head is ready for it, you won’t get caught off guard as easily.

“In the first barometer of global condemnation of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Ukraine and its Western backers persuaded a large majority of countries in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday to dismiss the annexation as illegal, even as Russia sought to rally world support for the idea of self-determination.” – United Nations General Assembly Vote Isolates Russia – NYTimes.com.

Instead of rambling on like so many about right & wrong and who we think is more at fault over this Ukraine thing – lets cut to the chase.

Nations around the world are lining up and taking sides on what could turn into a huge global economic split. Pictured below is a quick yet incomplete look at how the world is splitting apart.

I think we can assume that the BRICS are siding with Russia. The BRICS are the rising economic world power, a reality that must really threaten western leaders.

I may be jumping ahead, but if the BRICS chose to stand together and pick some other currency, like the Chinese Yuan, as the preferred currency for international trade, the US Dollar would loose its status as the sole world reserve currency.

What would the loss of the US Dollar’s dominance mean to main street America?

Technically speaking it would mean that a big chunk of the world would stop demanding dollars. Lower demand of anything results in lower value. When a currency looses value quickly we experience it as rising prices on consumables like food, fuel, and services. If it happens incredibly fast we call it hyperinflation.

Will we see more inflation if the world splits economically in two?

There’s no way to tell because so much reality is papered over by the central banks and government stimulus.

What worries me is that the world leaders seem hell-bent on taking us there. They will blame each other for the mess – when they are all to blame – and the people will end up footing the bill or worse.

So in the mean time I pray they stand down and find some other way to resolve these differences – and buckle up for a rough ride just in case cool heads don’t prevail.

So the spin is… other foreigners are buying our paper, as China dumps it. This story is also not exactly front page news, probably because most Americans don’t follow the currency war.

“China, the largest foreign U.S. creditor, reduced holdings of U.S. Treasury debt in December by the most in two years as the Federal Reserve announced plans to slow asset purchases.The nation pared its position in U.S. government bonds by $47.8 billion, or 3.6 percent, to $1.27 trillion, the largest decline since December 2011, according to U.S. Treasury Department data released yesterday. At the same time, international investors increased holdings by 1.4 percent, or by $78 billion, in December, pushing foreign holdings to a record $5.79 trillion.” – via China Cuts Treasury Holdings Most Since 2011 Amid Taper – Bloomberg.

The short version, in my humble opinion, is that the world is dividing between nations standing behind The West and The East, and the prize will be reserve currency status.

At the very least recognize that it’s on the table that The West will loose – or at least be willing to start a shooting war in an attempt to win; then… prepare.

Dang this latest news is better than any false flag. Obama now has the smoking gun he’s been seeking and a war with Iran will seem justified. It has been reported that Ahmadinejad’s cameraman has delivered key evidence into American hands.

“The Iranian cameraman assigned to document President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent trip to the UN has defected, and new reports claim that with his exit he has handed the US a trove of never-before-seen footage of his homeland’s nuclear facilities.” – RT.

I wish Obama would use this evidence to pressure Iran’s friends (China & Russia specifically) to help encourage Iran to work with the international community and give America & Israel no viable reason to start a war.

But sadly it looks like the joint US/Israel attack is loaded in the breech.

“After months of urging from Israeli authorities for the US to intervene in a rumored Iranian plan to procure a nuke, a source speaking on condition of anonymity tells Foreign Policy’s David Rothkopf that the two allies have come close to signing off on an attack against Iran.
Although no plan of action has been set in stone yet, the source says the attack will likely be from the sky and consist of drone strikes and bomber jets for only “a couple of hours” at best but would not require more than “a day or two” of action.” – RT

So lets just say this happens – after all it’s on the table. A couple of questions pop into my mind:

How will China or Russia respond? Will they jump in militarily and make WWIII official or will they continue to play their cards close to their chest and continue their subtle chess moves? I suspect the latter.

What will happen to the oil flow from the Middle East? We all know about the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz. We all know that Iran is well armed. This could go very badly for Americans at home if gas goes higher.

How will Americans respond? Will they support Obama and give him a landslide election or tell him to make up with Ahmadinejad and let the oil flow? I suspect both but would he seek peace?

Could this be the catalyst to collapse the petrodollar? An attack on Iran seems like it would have the potential to split the world in two – east & west. If this happened would oil trades cease to be made predominantly in U.S. Dollars? Seems plausible.

If the petrodollar collapses does the dollar collapse? Technically speaking – yes. Hyperinflation would be the result of a massive increase in the money supply, so if the demand for dollars suddenly dropped due to its abandonment for oil trades the dollar should technically drop in value – possibly collapse.

Would the U.S. Government go back on the gold standard to support the dollar? I think might – in fact I think the powers-that-be would do anything to protect the American way of life. There has been some speculation that the gold design features of the new $100 bill hints that this might be the case.

If there were a world war, and the U.S. went back on the gold standard, and replaced all old dollars with gold dollars, what would happen to all those foreign held paper dollars? Oh right, they would be made worthless – obsolete. That would also strengthen the dollar significantly and destabilize any nation relying on those old dollars.

I’m just asking questions and making guesses. I used to be a fairly good chess player and this reminds me of the thought process one uses to win. You know… if I move X, my opponent will move Y, Z, or… Q!? It’s always guess work but helps a player see ahead a few moves.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out… now I just need to go dig a bunker so I have somewhere to watch the game unfold.